affectionate stranger

affectionate strangers
I went and got my hair cut yesterday and had one of those experiences I dread; where the woman cutting it feels she knows better than I how I should wear it. She cut it shorter than I wanted (it’s quite long, typically) and all night long it seemed to invite people playing with it, brushing it out of my face, tugging at it as though that would make it grow.

I went out dancing and there was a woman in pig tails determined to talk to me. She passed inches from me and paused for a moment to look me dead in the eyes, before hovering nearby for some time. I was talking to my friend Mallory, but when she went to the bar to get a drink the woman with the pigtails came to speak to me. I couldnt for the life of me make out what she was saying, except that she was 40, she had just come from something having to do with the NOLA Red dress run and that she didn’t normally wear tennis shoes to the bar. She left after a few more awkward attempts at conversation, but she was always close by.

She hovered about for a bit and then on her way out she passed by, swept my hair out of my face and kissed me on the cheek, lingering for just a moment as though something more might come of it.

Mallory went prematurely gray in her early 20’s and wears it like a badge. She’d been discussing the fact that it invited people playing with it, as though touching it would prove that what they were seeing was real. She’s not a fan of affectionate strangers, she told me after mine had gone.